Writings.

19.01.06

The Yasawas

I don't have much time to write a lot here as I've now joined up with the Greenforce expedition and we're on our way out to a remote island off Vanua Levu, the second biggest island in Fiji. Last week, Oli and I went out to the Yasawas, a set of beautiful islands off to the north west of Nadi. Travelling in a bright yellow (and unfortunately expensive) catermeran, we cruised past many beautiful islands to our first destination - Adi's Place - a friendly little hostel on the Waya island. While we only stayed here two nights, we enjoyed a trip to a waterfall (very refreshing), some good snorkling on the corel reef just off the bay and we partook in a kava ceremony both nights (at first you think it's just like muddy water but the taste grows on you).

The company was excellent - we made good friends with a German student called Michael, two Norwegian sisters and an Alaskan. This allowed for some very interesting after dinner conversations, particularly when a couple of Swedes arrived and started arguing with us over the state of the English football team!

Our second island was Nanyua Lailai, right at the top of the Yasawas group. Seaspray, the place we stayed at, was very basic - there wasn't even any running water. We didn't really do a lot here - mainly reading (I finished an 800 page book and a 400 page book within 3 days) and a bit of swimming. We walked over the island to the 'famous' Blue Lagoon but this proved to be disappointing - the coral reef was in a terrible condition. The food was good and our hosts very friendly but the highlight of this island was probably the little teashop just down the beach, where you could get a slice of chocolate cake and a mug of tea for only $3.

The journey back to Nadi was over 4 hours long and I came down a bit sick on the way back; not due to the boat but probably due to minor food poisoning or something, as two of the other people staying at Seaspray had come down with the same thing the night before. I wasn't actually sick but felt ill and went to bed early, thus it wasn't til the following morning that I met up with all the Greenforce people that had arrived in our absence.

Over the last few days we've got to know each other well and Oli and I have both made good friends with a lot of the people here. The staff are also very cool - all in their mid twenties and good fun. We're currenltly in Suva, the capital of Fiji, and tomorrow we go to take an overnight ferry up to SavuSavu on Vanua Levu. I've just bought a couple of Sulus (skirts basically - it's the traditional dress we need for our village trips) as well as an extremely loud shirt, but unfortunately I won't be able to post any more pictures til I get somewhere with a fast connection and plenty of time - probably around the end of March.

While I'm living on a remote island updating this blog will be tricky, although I will try to post some updates. For those of you with RSS readers, the site feed is http://www.nmjenkins.com/atom.xml - you can subscribe to this to be notified of updates.